DPTV-based analysis of the flow-structure/wall-shear interplay in open wet clutches

Abstract

The trend to lower energy consumption in the automotive industry still offers potential in various fields of application. One powerful saving strategy is described by the idling behavior of wet clutches, where the speed difference between drive and output, and the cooling oil in combination with a sub-millimeter spacing leads to significant amounts of wall shear stress (WSS) and accordingly drag torque. Minimization of this adverse effect has been found to be possible by means of grooved clutch-disk geometries, which have been demonstrated to correlate with the drag torque (see e.g. Neupert et al., 2018). The main interplay between torque and fluid flow in open wet clutches has been analyzed by Leister et al. (2020) in a dimensionless way. Today, a detailed investigation of a clutch flow, however, is missing for a larger variety of groove patterns and the cause-effect relations remain yet to be fully understood. Especially, the clear identification of the so-called foot print of a particular groove geometry in the flow field and corresponding WSS – thus drag-torque predictions – still requires further research efforts.